Bellator boss stands behind Santos, hopes for Konrad-Prindle 'within weeks'
Bellator Fighting Championships' CEO Bjorn Rebney is understandably disappointed in Thiago Santos (10-1 MMA, 2-0 BFC).
That said, he's not giving up on "Big Monster" just yet.
One day after Santos missed weight for his Bellator 62 headlining bout, Rebney said he's not giving up on the Brazilian just yet. In fact, Rebney wants to help Santos better his nutrition program and reach his full potential.
"We're upset, and it is unprofessional," Rebney told MMAjunkie.com (
www.mmajunkie.com). "But he's got unlimited potential. He's young as can be. He comes from a really poor, really underdeveloped area. He's not an American wrestler. He doesn't have any kind of history of cutting weight regularly. Just having talked to the kid and his folks last week, he knows nothing about diet – like an inadequacy of knowledge on diet that was just shocking to me for a professional athlete.
"I was looking at him, and he's a nice kid. He's kind of a big teddy bear of a guy, but you looked at him, and he was talking about eating things like mashed potatoes. I was like, 'What? Wait. No. You're still 20 pounds over. You should be eating like grade-A sashimi and some dry broccoli. Why are we talking about mashed potatoes? Really?'"
Santos earned his way into Bellator's season-five tournament final with impressive submission wins over Neil Grove and Josh Burns. He then faced Prindle in the finals of the tourney only to see the fight end in a no-contest after kicking his opponent in the groin. The controversial ending set up a rematch at this past week's Bellator 61 event. However, that fight was scratched when Prindle was stricken with "flu-like symptoms."
There were rumblings that the bout was actually delayed due to Santos' battle with weight, but Rebney insists that's simply not true.
"Thiago was battling weight issues last week," Rebney said. "But the call to delay the fight literally was made before we had any real substantial knowledge of what Thiago's weight was or wasn't. And Thiago was actually closer to being ready to getting on the scales and making weight last week than he was this week. The judgment call on my part was really made on Prindle just being sick. He was literally sitting in fighter interviews vomiting into a garbage can."
So the fight was pushed to this week's event, but Santos registered 276.8 pounds, leaving him ineligible for the heavyweight bout. Faced with a difficult decision, Rebney declared Prindle the tournament winner, earning him a shot at current heavyweight champion Cole Konrad.
"You just looked at the circumstances," Rebney said. "The first ended with a kick to the crotch. Prindle doesn't have the chance to complete the first fight because he got kicked in the groin. He shows for the next one and is vomiting, sick as can be, 36 hours before he's supposed to be in the cage. Prindle wanted to fight, but you look at him and say to yourself, 'This guy, he was not at fault the first time the fight got DQ'd. Then he shows up, and he's vomiting and is sick.' … I just made a judgment call.
"The good news is it wasn't really losing the main event, per se. We never anticipated having this fight on this show literally a week ago. We thought the fight was going to take place last week. This lightweight tournament is stacked, and we've got some crazy good fights on this card, so it wasn't as if we had been building up on this. It wasn't the equivalent of losing an Eddie Alvarez vs. Shinya Aoki fight or Ben Askren vs. Douglas Lima. It kind of got added last-minute."
Awarding a tournament win by default is obviously less than ideal, and many MMA pundits wondered if there should have been another option available. Rebney said that alternates are kept on hand in the opening and semifinal rounds of the promotion's tournaments, but he's thus far been opposed to slotting a substitute into a final-round matchup.
That said, he realizes it may be necessary to come with a new backup plan.
"Just like everything else with the organization, we'll reanalyze it, but it always seemed to be a little but counterintuitive to have an alternate fighting for the right to fight for the world title," Rebney said. "I've always felt comfortable saying, 'Look, if an alternate fights in the first round and wins and then someone either can't make weight or gets sick or gets injured, that alternate that won in the first round should get that semifinal slot.' But it's been a little bit of a disconnect to say that alternate who has won twice now could get the chance to fight for the tournament championship and $100,000. That's not to say that it shouldn't be reanalyzed. That's not to say that we shouldn't sit down as a team and chalkboard the whole thing out and figure out if there is a better alternative.
"Thankfully, this is the first time this has happened. We do 25 shows a year, minimum, and we're going to 25 shows a year every year, so it's probably going to come up again. I'll sure sit down with the team and figure out if there's a better structure and a more reasonable way to move it forward."
Despite the unfortunate circumstances, Rebney said there is a potential upside for Bellator fans: a heavyweight championship sooner rather than later. The Bellator exec said champ Konrad is itching to fight, and he anticipates booking a Konrad-Prindle fight within the next few weeks.
"We told Cole to be ready," Rebney said. "He told us he's going to be ready. Literally, you could see that fight within weeks.
"It's obviously not an ideal situation, but the good news is that Prindle is 100 percent. Stylistically, it's going to be another old-school kind of matchup. One guy is going to try to knock one guy's head off, and another guy is going to try and shoot for the double-leg and put the other guy on his back. We'll see."
Meanwhile, Rebney vows Santos will be back. While obviously disappointed in the 25-year-old heavyweight, Rebney said he'll be there to support his fighter.
"You look at him, and it almost brings tears to your eyes," Rebney said. "You think, 'Man, this kid with all this promise – it's not like he's a pompous, overpaid athlete who's egocentric and just doesn't care.' He was working like a crazed dog. He was in the sauna for two days. He was miserable. He just doesn't know. He just doesn't have a real nutritionist to sit with him and say in Portuguese, 'This is what you have to do.'
"He's never worked with an American wrestling coach who says, 'OK, look. In the fourth week, you do this. In the third week, you do this. In the second week, you do this.' He's a big, strong kid with amazing natural talent, great jiu-jitsu skills and crazy knockout power who just doesn't have the right team around him. I don't mean to sound like Mother Teresa, but I think it's our job as a promotion who believes in this kid to not give up on him, not terminate his contract, but to try and help him – to try and get guys around him who can give him that expertise.
"We'll find a good nutritionist. We'll find some good people for him. We'll put them together. Then if he misses weight, totally different story. But for the time being, let's give him a shot. Let's give him another chance."
